London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

The London Tube boss today warned that passengers could suffer years of disruption because of a £12 billion funding gap in planned upgrades to two lines.

Transport for London’s managing director Mike Brown called for government cash to complete the Piccadilly and Bakerloo lines’ modernisation as well as upgrades to Bank, Monument and Holborn stations.

He said reliability on the services — with 30-year-old trains operating on the Piccadilly line — would be affected and cash would be wasted on repairs.

Speaking on today’s 150th anniversary of the Tube, the world’s oldest underground railway, he accused ministers of undermining growth with intermittent funding of London transport pro- jects. “There is a ridiculous stop-start approach where you order trains one day and then say there’s no further commitment. It’s mad,” he said.

“All the benefits you have seen in reliability will plateau and we will be spending a huge amount of money to sustain performance rather than to improve. If the Piccadilly line fleet is not replaced in 10 years there will be more failures of signals and trains.”

Funding has already been secured for the Northern line upgrade, to be completed in 2014, new trains and signalling for the “sub-surface” routes comprising 40 per cent of the network and for the Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan and Circle lines. The modernisation programme has included recent upgrades of the Jubilee and Victoria lines.

If funding is granted, the Piccadilly line could acquire the first articulated trains with walk-through carriages, and air conditioning to improve hot and cramped conditions. The Waterloo & City, Piccadilly and Central lines could be the first to see driverless trains introduced, but not until the middle of the next decade, said Mr Brown.

Computer technology led to improved acceleration and braking times and also a more frequent service, he added. Trains on the Jubilee, Victoria and Central lines are already driven automatically, though the cabins are manned.

Mr Brown said: “I imagine in the middle of the next decade you’ll see driverless trains running if we get a settlement soon. Around the world 75 per cent of new metro trains are with driverless trains but to convert old lines like ours is much more complex.”

The first underground journey saw steam trains running from Paddington to Farringdon in 1863.

Mr Brown said: “London is arguably the greatest city in the world and it’s very unlikely that would have happened without the fast links connecting villages and communities to the metropolitan mass.”